Thursday 12 January 2012

Day 11: Dargaville and Baylys Beach: the Tasman Sea

In the morning, I let Molly sleep in, and walked to town for coffee and breakfast.
En route I saw someone delivering the mail:
bicycling female mail carrier

the bathroom from my home away from home, the Blah Blah Blah Cafe

one more thing I don't know about wine.
Molly walked into town and met up with me...

Huh?
 We went to Countdown, the supermarket, looking for bug spray and itch cream, among other things. But, we FOUND other things...
mince pies...are these leftover from Christmas?

the ubiquitous beetroot
We then went looking for postcard stamps...and we looked here:

This, however was a fitness gym...which one didn't know until going inside.  The real post office was in the Lotto store.

Then, a 10 minute car ride to Baylys Beach, where we got to put our toes into the Tasman Sea.

Molly runs on the beach; there were others fishing and surfing

Wading deep

the sand was black and grey, and packed very hard for extremely pleasant walking

looking back at the entry to the beach


the runner returns


Uh....what exactly are Toheroa??? No Google on the beach

Baylys Beach had its own observatory...but we passed on the recommended Funky Fish restaurant

Back at the Blah Blah Blah Cafe: Hamuka? on Kumara Mash;
Molly had a lentil burger...

We chilled out back in the hotel room in the afternoon, then had dinner in: almond butter sandwiches and salad. We watched Jack Black and Emily Blunt in Gulliver's Travels in the evening, and turned in. But we slept fitfully--the rains that occurred during the night were unbelievably hard.  

All in all, a good stop.  Thank goodness for the ethernet there. My wifi has gone bonkers.

3 comments:

  1. I love seeing your views on all things 'Kiwi' the ubiquitous beetroot :) indeed, it's everywhere, like wonder bread ! Looks like you are enjoying your time in my homeland, all the best, Richard.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You probably found this out already but toheroa are tasty shellfish..too tasty for their own good as they now are rare. I looked you up on a map as my geography knowledge is incomplete. You are in the Kumara capital of the world.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You are right--I was in the Kumara capital of the world. Kumara mash is great! I am now in the Bay of Plenty at a fabulous farm/household headed...BTW I had not looked up toheroa--I really have trouble remembering the Maori-influenced word and place names and get things quite comically mixed up sometimes. More tomorrow.

    ReplyDelete